Installation

The following build process is tested on a clean Ubuntu 20.04 system.

Dependencies

Install libraries

sudo apt-get install build-essential cmake pkg-config git

sudo apt-get install libglpk-dev libeigen3-dev libassimp-dev libccd-dev libfcl-dev libboost-regex-dev libboost-system-dev libopenscenegraph-dev libbullet-dev libtinyxml2-dev liburdfdom-dev libxi-dev libxmu-dev freeglut3-dev libnlopt-dev

Install qhull

git clone https://github.com/qhull/qhull.git
cd qhull
cd build
cmake ..
make
ctest
sudo make install

Install yaml-cpp

git clone https://github.com/jbeder/yaml-cpp.git
cd yaml-cpp
mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..
make
sudo make install

Update the external libraries

git submodule update --init --recursive --progress

Install Dart

You can choose to (1) build and install dart in the system or (2) build dart in this project.

(1) If you want to build and install dart:

cd ./src/mechanics/external/dartsim
mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..
make -j8
sudo make install

(2) If you don't want to build and install dart, comment FIND_PACKAGE(DART REQUIRED COMPONENTS gui collision-bullet utils) in the {project-root}/CMakeLists.txt, and uncomment add_subdirectory(dartsim) in {project-root}/src/mechanics/external/CMakeLists.txt. And proceed to the next step.

Build this project

Use cmake to build this project in the project root folder

mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..
make

Add export LD_LIBRARY_PATH="$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:/usr/local/lib" to ~/.bashrc

Additional Notes

If there is an error in finding nlopt, please install nlopt from source files

git clone https://github.com/stevengj/nlopt.git
cd nlopt
mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..
make
sudo make install

And then go back to rebuild dart and this probject.

Run Examples

To check a task

build/bin/hidex_planner data/{task-name}

Currently, the default is to visualize a plan it has generated and saved before. You can change the visualize_option in the setup.yaml in the task folder to run the planning. It includes "csv" (visualize a plan), "setup" (visualize the environment setup and start and goal), "save" (run the planner and save the result), "show" (run the planner, save the result, and visualize the plan). Please check {project-root}/data/template_task/setup.yaml for more instructions.

Here is an example. Run this in the project root folder

build/bin/hidex_planner data/bookshelf

You will see the plan of pulling a book out of the bookshelf.

Write your own task

1. You first want to create a task folder, it doesn't matter where you put the folder, but we recommend to put it under {project-root}/data. We recommend copying the folder {project-root}/data/template_task.

2. For starting, we recommend using our preset robot models. Then, the only thing you need to do is to modify {project-root}/data/{your_task_folder}/setup.yaml. Please follow the instructions in {project-root}/data/template_task/setup.yaml to make your own task. It is also beneficial to refer to other tasks in the data folder.

3. Now you are ready to run your own task with the command build/bin/hidex_planner data/{your-task-folder}

4. If you want to use your own robot models, it requires changes to the source code.